A Room of Her Own at the Clark

  

 

 

A Room of Her Own: Women Artist-Activists In Britain, 1875-1945
Clark Museum of Art lower level

Williamstown, Ma

Through September 14, 2025.

 

It’s no secret that women have historically gotten short shrift in art galleries. This is especially the case for women married to a renowned artist. Revisionist art historians now believe that numerous masterpieces attributed to men were actually done by wives and daughters. There is no doubt whatsoever that many female artists were limited in subjects to domestic scenes that struck many critics of the day as treacle. That’s because social norms restricted women to sentimental subjects (flowers, children, domestic duties) lest their “delicate natures” be ruined.

 

At first glance, there’s not much radical or shocking material in the Clark exhibit. The real radical act was the very act of painting, drawing, or sculpting. In the period between 1875-1945 British women weren’t supposes to do that. The exhibition title A Room of Her Own takes its cue from a 1929 essay from Virginia Woolf that argued that women needed personal physical space in which to unleash their creativity. Of course, female writers had long known about discrimination. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was originally released with her husband’s name on the cover, Mary Ann Evans published as George Eliot, the Bronte sisters as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, Elizabeth Gaskell was Cotton Mather Mills, Louise May Alcott was A M Barnard, and Amandine Lucie Aurore Dupin became George Sand. Even today that practice endures. Or did you think Joanne Rowling wanted to be known as J.K. or Robert Galbraith?

 

One of the painters shown is Vanessa Bell,  sister of Virginia Woolf. Here’s Bell’s modernist  painting of her sister. Here also is Anna’s self-portrait, gripping her brushes.Another quietly subversive painting is Nina Hammnett’s, Portrait of a Woman (1917) showing a woman deep in study. Vanessa Bell also worked in ceramics and did a series on admirable women. There are ten plates on display (of 48 ) that once belonged to Kenneth Clark. Duncan Grant and Clark’s wife, Lady Jane Clark, helped  paint them. 

 

Vanessa Bell of Virginia Woolf

 

Nina Hammnett Portrait of a Woman

Anna Alma-Tadema

One of the more striking works on display is Wilfred Knight’s The Deluge. It’s a depiction of the Biblical flood with six figures leaning forward to imbue the canvass with drama. In the late 19^th century the Pre-Raphaelites were in vogue. Although Lawrence Alma-Tadema was considered a realist, he influenced them, as did his wife Alma with The Garden Studio, which became her room of her own. Mary Lowndes did a take on Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt in The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple. Evelyn De Morgan took a more gloomy look on her 1915 painting The Field of the Slain, her protest against the bloodshed of World War One. Marie Spartali Stillman’s Love’s Messenger (1885), though, is a classic Pre-Raphaelite work. 

Knight The Deluge

De Morgan Field of the Slain

Stillman, Love's Messenger

We get more war images when Britain entered the Second World War. Dame Laura Knight did Take Off in 1943 showing a crew preparing for a bombing mission in Germany. This Stirling Mk III bomber was shortly after decommissioned.  She also did Balloon Site, Coventry in which women are in charge and using their muscles on an equal basis with men. 

 

Knight, Take-Off

 

Balloon Site, Coventry

My three favorites, though, are Annie Louisa Swynnerton’s The Sense of Sight (1895) , an angel’s stunned look at the visible world, Swynnerton’s Mater Triumphalis (1892), a very rare nude done by a female artist, and Elizabeth Adela Armstrong’s Will o’ the Wisp (1900). Okay, so I like the Pre-Raphaelites, so sue me!

A Sense of Sight

Mater Triumphalis 

 

 

 

 

Will of the Wisp

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

Great Black Hope: Elegant Writing, but Weak Narrative

 

 

 

Great Black Hope (2025)

By Rob Franklin

Simon and Schuster, 320 pages

★★★

 

 

Have recently read several novels dealing with African-American high achievers who have done stupid things. Most of them wrestle with the age-old question of what matters most, race or social class? Rob Franklin is one of them and in Great Black Hope suggests that race obliterates class.

 

I will admit up front that the self-inflicted travails of elites bores me. (My take is that in individual cases race matters most, but collectively social class is more important.) David Smith–usually called just “Smith”– comes from a family of high flyers and is, himself, a graduate of Stanford. Many people say that Stanford is harder to get into than Harvard. At Stanford, Smith had numerous white friends, was active socially, partied, and was openly gay.

 

Like many college grads, Smith is adrift for a time after graduation. He goes back to his hometown of Atlanta, where his family is filled with high achievers. They resemble what W.E.B. DuBois called the talented 10th; that is, they are lawyers, designers, and business people. This is remarkable as the Smith family is just several generations removed from being sharecroppers. Smith would love to be a literary heavyweight, but is working as a tech writer. He feels like a fish out of water in Atlanta, though his gayness is not an issue.

 

Thus far the novel has the stamp of upward mobility analogous to those of white social climbers  with all of the intendant First World problems. Smith heads off to New York City, continues his tech writing, and shares a nice apartment with Elle England, whose mother is a famous soul singer. Smith hits New York’s gay club scene and has mostly white boyfriends. At a party in the Hamptons, Smith is arrested for possession of cocaine. Was he targeted for being the “black guy? Probably, but all he can think of is how to avoid embarrassing his family or going to prison. His lawyer sister recommends a good New York lawyer who advises Smith to attend AA before appearing before a judge, even though Smith insists that he's not addicted. Another inner reason is that he thinks that he's better than the other saps who end up in such programs. As if he doesn't have enough problems, Elle is murdered. Smith is soon hounded by an ambitious reporter who wants to pump him for information on the “real” Elle England. Moreover, Elle was seen leaving a club with a black man. Is Smith a suspect?

 

Franklin resolves some of Smith’s dilemmas, but overall he fudges what we are supposed to observe. I came away feeling that Elle’s murder was superfluous to the plot. Franklin makes us see that Smith suffers from confused identities. It is true enough that human beings wear many hats at once but they usually have a primary identity. It appears that Franklin wants us to see that doesn't insulate rich black people the way it does rich whites. That's not exactly breaking news, but why does Franklin make Smith seem like a stalker in seeking white sexual partners?

 

In my view Franklin wants to enhance Smith's obliviousness. To that end, Smith has a flat affect and his actions suggest that he's a bonehead. Who would risk a stiff jail sentence and continue to party just to run with the pack? I found my attention wandering because David Smith began to seem like any other story about a person with great advantages who throws them away. Call me a classist if you must, but I don't really care about the thoughtless rich, the whirl of fancy overpriced restaurants, and lives of surfaces lacking depth. I’m tired of novels about privileged and pretentious New Yorkers.

 

This is Rob Franklin's debut novel. It is by turn funny and tragic. Alas, Franklin's narrative gets away from him to the degree that Smith is relegated to a piece of background scenery rather than the center of the story. One could only hope his next book will be more down to earth and narratively tighter. It's a shame to waste such elegant prose on a cliched story.

 

# Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an opportunity to review this book.

 

Rob Weir

 

Who's Your MoMA Part Two

 

Klint

I've been in Canada for the past week, hence the radio silence on this blog. It was an amazing experience just to get a break from the news cycle, talk to nice folks, and let them know that yours truly is as baffled as they by American politics. More anon on that subject. 

Here's part two of things from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. First up is Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. She died in 1944, but is having a moment these days. MoMA is currently featuring her works of vegetation. If that sounds dull, let me assure you, it's not. Klint loved flowers, ferns, etc. The above image is like a clay photographic negative of Queen Anne's Lace. Note my comments on the ones below.

 

This work reminded me of Aboriginal waterhole "dreamings"

 

 

 

 

Klint moved into abstraction. This is her impression of an orange marigold.

 

 

 

She is best known as a precursor to pop art.

Numerous artists commented upon the human condition and its foibles.

This Kazuo Shiraga tackles First World gluttony

This 1968 sculpture by Dorothy Dehner is social distancing before it was a thing

And, of course, war is the ultimate human frailty. 

Kathe Kollwitz, "Tower of Women "

This David Alfaro Siquero work from early WW II says it all

Of course, abstraction and deconstruction have long been staples of art. 

Francis Picabia 1914 during WW I 

 

 

Arshile Gorky 1941

Nkanga tribute to Ralph Ellison

 

 

Nkanda tribute to Art Blakey

Jack Whitten tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.

 Finally, one of my all-time favorites. Henri Rousseau was considered a primitivist, a style of art that came after impressionism. He was not interested in real situations or color, so he was also a bit of a fauvist. This work is huge and I took a detail shot of "Dreaming."

Rob Weir